User blog:Vance Clark/Troublesome Directions
March 04th, 2017. Vance woke that morning fully rested from sleeping through the previous day. Checking his wound from the other night, it had all but fully healed, leaving only a light scar mark from the fresh skin that had healed over. He made himself some food and took no delay in equipping himself. Looking at his ammo, Vance began to regret not taking some from Cassandra the other day. However he did not feel it would be right to loot her body after what happened. So he decided to go out in search of more answers, or at least something to do other than sit around doing nothing. Besides, Vance was somewhat in the mood to shoot zombies anyway. Having finished eating he left the building and headed east. Didn’t really matter to him what direction he went in, but he had a gut instinct to go that way. Wandering through the streets he saw several burnt or overturned cars, other cars were fine other than being smashed or apparently broken into, but none of which appeared driveable. He also saw various other things in the streets; dead or mutilated bodies, school or tour busses just left randomly wherever they’d been abandoned, and even shipping crates of all sorts. Needless to say the streets from here on in were a real mess, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Not far in this direction, Vance saw piles of burnt corpses. Disgustingly brutal and rather inhuman, it almost appeared as if he had stumbled upon a city of witch hunters or something. Either way, it looked and smelled gross, so Vance left the corpses alone. Continuing to head eastward, without making much noise himself, Vance heard a familiar noise. The low groan of hungry zombies could easily be recognized, and it was closing in on Vance. He hid behind a dumpster and peered out to the side. From this position he spotted a few zombies roaming in his direction. Not many, but they certainly looked odd. They had a purple hue to their skin, if you could even call it skin, and their hands were so charred and rotten looking they appeared a faint green-gray. They were slow even still, but Vance didn’t like the look of them. He remained hidden behind the dumpster, waiting for the perfect moment, and when one zombie came past the dumpster he smashed it’s skull in with the butt of his rifle. He kicked the zombie out of the way and commenced shooting the zombies that followed. He was being careful not to waste too much ammo, making sure every shot hit, but it wasn’t long before his shooting had attracted the attention of more zombies. He’d shot every last one of them that he could see, and within moments of him letting go of the trigger, he heard moaning right behind him. He quickly turned around and started blasting wildly, taking slow steps backwards over the dead zombies to keep away from the ones that were close. Putting his back up against a police car, he noticed zombies coming in from every direction. He was surrounded, but they weren’t very close yet. Facing south and to his left he noticed the fewest zombies coming from that side of the street, so he dashed in that direction, head-shotting the two zombies in his path. The ones behind him started moving faster, trying to keep up with him, but they were nowhere near fast enough. Vance kept going, and it appeared he’d gotten away for the most part. He’d come across a few zombies here and there but nothing he couldn’t handle. But no matter how careful he was, every shot he made contributed to the zombies knowing where he was. Eventually he came to a left turn as he traveled east. The zombies wouldn’t let up, no matter how much he killed. As he was about to turn that corner, something big came around the corner to face him. Another zombie, obviously, but it looked too inhuman to be anything like the others. It had no skin to speak of, just muscles everywhere, and was twice the size of any zombie he’d seen before. Lacking any skin its body was a bright red from its muscular visage, and it appeared to have a longer reach than the zombies too. Vance tried to dash away from it but had to dive out of the way when it swung its arms. Had he not moved so quickly, his face would look the same as the corner of that building now does; with a huge hole smashed through the edge like someone had taken a bite out of the building. Moving behind the big red zombie so that he wouldn’t get surrounded, he fired almost every bullet he had in the magazine of his AK5 into its back. The beast finally went down, and Vance was two bullets short of empty for his assault rifle. He slung the gun over his back and dashed north. He just didn’t have the ammo to take on these zombies. Approaching an intersection, he began to see even more of these red monstrosities. Many of them coming from his right, a few from the north, and many purple zombies behind him, he decided now would be a good time for a rapid course correction. He started heading west now, avoiding zombies whenever he could, and taking out ones he couldn’t avoid with his handgun, which did a good job keeping his path more or less clear. Eventually he noticed the more westward he headed, the less of those freaky zombies he saw. It seemed like, depending on where he was in the city, he would see different types of zombies. And now, Vance had traveled quite a long way, and was getting tired. Luckily it wasn’t very hard taking out the zombies that now chased him, but he didn’t want to run out of ammo before he could find some place safe. He didn’t really know where he was going, and now heading south he found what appeared to be a hardware store. The place had been boarded up and looked unused. Vance took short order of breaking down the barricade and taking a look inside. He mostly found a lot of broken repair tools and garbage, but did find some 9mm ammo that he could put in his other clip, as well as some more 5.5mm rifle ammo for his AK5. Not much, but enough to last him till he can find more. What these bullets were doing in a hardware store was beyond him, but Vance didn’t bother to complain. He left the store only to be greeted by more normal zombies. He charged past them, cutting off the heads of two zombies with his combat knife when he ran between them. Continuing west he came across a tour bus that appeared to be lying on its side on top of some writing that had been painted on the road. He couldn’t tell what it was supposed to say, but he continued in that direction. He eventually came across a large gate, which didn’t take him long to discover what it was for or where it lead to. There were human guards positioned on either side of the gate. This appeared to be a safe-zone for those still alive. After being asked some short questions they let Vance on through without much hassle. Apparently all that really matters to them is that you’re human and uninfected. One of the guards gave Vance some directions and a short welcome to the outpost, and Vance was let on his way. He looked around a bit, but needless to say, the moment he found somewhere safe and unused he claimed it as his temporary residence. He found a building with at least four or five floors to it, tall enough to be safely above ground, but short enough to go unnoticed behind the other taller buildings. He made a fort in a room on the top floor with tall windows that looked out over the marketplace in the outpost. It appeared to be an office building, and this could have been an important person’s office; perhaps an executive or administrator. The room had a good amount of furniture in it as well as desks and counters and two doors at the other side of the room. One such back room had your basic office-building kitchenware; a fridge, a sink, a stove and washer, and best of all, a microwave, and it all had power, too! The next room over looked like an office bedroom suite, with a bathroom connected to it. The only thing this bedroom didn’t have was a working telephone and television. Oh, it had a phone and TV, alright, but neither had any service, so the TV just came up blank and the phone had no dial tone. Yep, this was the place Vance had decided to move into. Part of him didn’t want to leave behind the old apartment, considering how secure it was and all the research notes that were there, but he could always go back later if he felt the need. Vance considered himself lucky to find this building uninhabited and, for the most part, untouched. A lot of the furniture was covered up with white sheets, but uncovering it all was easy. The only thing Vance thought this room needed now was a sniper and a tonne of ammo. But nothing’s perfect, and this place will do just fine. Vance turned in for the night after making sure no one could get in. He’d propped a couple of the desks up against the door, then turned in for the night. Category:Blog posts